While We Waltz Off on Book Tour

At long last, I was persuaded by those I trust most at the publishing house that has stood by me for 15 years that real writers tour. Everyone tours, illustrious authors and first-time novelists, egomaniacs and homebodies. As far as I could tell, the book tour I had always refused any part of didn’t really have a downside. No one would miss me for a few weeks, of this I was assured. My children would be in good hands. My dogs would howl at the back door for an hour or so, until time took on canine proportions. I wouldn’t have to answer phone calls or respond to bills. Instead, I would be visiting some of the best bookstores in the country. I would be staying at wonderful hotels, in rooms with views and Jacuzzis and maids to turn down the bed. I would wear something other than jeans and sweat shirts. I would drink wine, be with adults, buy a silk blouse and a stack of magazines to read on the plane. I would talk about myself, often and at great length.

I said yes. I admit it. And once I had begun, it took only a single afternoon for me to understand why everyone was going on the road: Touring is easier than writing.

It goes something like this: You fly to Chicago--or Minneapolis or Detroit--and are met at the airport by a literary escort who knows books as well as the town. Without fuss, your luggage is retrieved and you’re driven to a terrific hotel, where you can order room service and have your clothes pressed, which you would never bother with at home. Clearly, a writer could get used to such a routine. There is something completely unwriterly about touring, so public and social and amazingly unlike sitting in one’s attic all day with a hot computer and a cold cup of tea, trying to get the scent of violets or the sound of a horse drinking cool water onto the page. It was so effortless to live this life, so extremely pleasant, that I might have enjoyed it had I not felt, from the very start of my tour, that something was not right. When I phoned home, all was well, yet I continued to wake at odd hours. I felt guilty and out of sorts, as though I had wronged someone. I could feel betrayal on my skin.

Three thousand miles away, in the attic of my house, beneath a slanting ceiling, uncomfortably scrunched onto the white wicker couch--which was already piled high with books and manuscripts and unanswered mail--was a man who hadn’t bothered to clean the mud off his boots. He had always been difficult--anyone who knew him knew that much--but now that he was left to his own devices, he had become downright surly. The woman seated beside him hadn’t eaten or slept since I had gone away; she was growing as pale as the white wicker, and her mouth was set in an angry line. For one thing, she wasn’t talking to the man next to her, and wouldn’t be for another 50 pages--pages, she continually reminded me, I had not yet written because I was on tour.

So there they were, furious at each other for all that had happened years earlier, drawn to each other more than ever, and yet unable to speak because they were not yet on the same page. To make matters worse, beside the woman was her teen-age daughter, who had been chewing the same piece of bubble gum for all the days I’d been away, blowing bubbles, then popping them, driving the others mad. This girl has good reason to be annoyed at her lack of control inside and outside fiction--her age and name and hair color may all change at the author’s whim--but, no matter how many times she is revised, certain elements will remain unaltered, a core or essence or--if you will allow this to a character--a soul around which all else is built. For instance, this girl will never want to be in the same room with her mother and this man, let alone be trapped there for the duration of my tour. She will always stick out her tongue and make rude noises when anyone--this writer, for instance--asks why she is drawing on the clean white office wall with a tube of cheap drugstore lipstick.

It is clear that two weeks spent together on the couch rather than on the page does not bring out the best in one’s characters. Given this sort of time, they begin to ask questions. What is their motivation? Whom do they love? If the writer should dare to prolong the tour, her characters may start to wonder if it would help matters for them to know how it all turns out in the end. Well, knowing how it all turns out on the page is not unlike carrying around the exact moment and circumstance of one’s own death. Once granted that piece of news, why would a character go on? Why would a novelist continue? That I have no idea of where we are headed is not information I’m about to reveal to my characters, at least not in my absence, since they seem convinced that they know exactly who they are and are taking up more and more space every day.

Another storm is moving in across my home state. I take the new silk blouse from my suitcase, then travel down to a bookstore to meet my readers. As I look out the window of the limo, I think about how it is true not only that my characters do not exist without me, but also that I do not exist without them. Without them, I am simply a woman in a hotel room. With them, I’m a writer, one in a desperate hurry to get home to whoever’s waiting.